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An Autonomous Dynamical System Captures all LCSs in Three-Dimensional Unsteady Flows

Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs) are material surfaces that shape finite-time tracer patterns in flows with arbitrary time dependence. Depending on their deformation properties, elliptic and hyperbolic LCSs have been identified from different variational principles, solving different equations. Here we observe that, in three dimensions, initial positions of all variational LCSs are invariant manifolds of the same autonomous dynamical system, generated by the intermediate eigenvector field, $ξ_{2}(x_{0})$, of the Cauchy-Green strain tensor. This $ξ_{2}$-system allows for the detection of LCSs in any unsteady flow by classic methods, such as Poincaré maps, developed for autonomous dynamical systems. As examples, we consider both steady and time-aperiodic flows, and use their dual $ξ_{2}$-system to uncover both hyperbolic and elliptic LCSs from a single computation.